Frédéric Adrait

Frédéric Adrait, a native artist of Lyon, has embarked for about 10 years in a plastic research focused on portraying. He has tried to reinvent the portrait, imparting it with the love he feels for mankind and the passion he has for the mysteries in the eyes and the souls, but also endeavouring to enrich it by visually challenging the modern image.

Beyond the emotional dimension there is the social influence on which the artist can so skillfully play : he shapes his portraits by projecting and crushing matter, inserting in it collages, letters and bar codes, all of them inlaid in the faces in a most natural way.

The artist explains : "I have always been attracted by the representation of man in art and especially his eyes. Each look is to me a question, a problem to be solved. I try to grasp this instant, this moment of truth when emotion appears unsullied. I see painting as a battle against myself. At first I try to draw as precisely as possible : it is the control phase. Once that is achieved I let myself go, painting then gets more rapid and more instinctive. In that phase I try to control the wind in order to reach the heart of the matter."